Volvo to protect pedestrians with external airbags

richierichballs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqMdDTv0QqU

Make all the jokes you want about Volvo cars being indestructible, but the company knows how to make safe cars. Depicted in the video above is Volvo’s latest foray into the bleeding edge of safety technology.
Called Pedestrian Detection, it’s a new system geared towards reducing injuries sustained by pedestrians if hit by a car. It works by deploying the world’s first external airbag across the windshield and hood to help cushion the impact.
The system has been introduced as part of Volvo’s IntelliSafe vehicle line. The new airbag system is part of a two-fold technological effort to reduce the danger to people who enter into the path of a vehicle. Using external radar location sensors, the vehicles equipped with IntelliSafe can detect if there is an object or person that you are in danger of hitting. After that a number of phases take place in an attempt to avoid or lessen the seriousness of the impending accident.
The first phase is to warn the driver as well as automatically engage the brakes to bring the vehicle to a stop as soon as possible. If even after that an accident is inevitable, contact sensors on the bumper and hood will instantly deploy the aforementioned external airbag.






Volvo’s attempt to improve pedestrian safety should be commended, but there is a caveat to this new airbag system: it only works effectively when the car is travelling below 22mph. However, with the amount of traffic on our roads today, that’s probably going to be a speed you travel most of the time anyway.
If you’re interested in owning a car equipped with the IntelliSafe system, the car in the video is the Volve V40 and retails for around $40,000.

johnos1984

I'd prefer if pedestrians looked after themselves and took a second to look before walking out on the road

How expensive will it be for the driver to change those bags because a pedestrian won't cough up the cash.

I'd consider that seriously off putting if I was buying a car

eth0

Great another thing thats of absolutely no use to you that you have to fix at an awful price to get the pesky light to turn off so you'll pass the NCT

Anan1

johnos1984 wrote: »

How expensive will it be for the driver to change those bags because a pedestrian won't cough up the cash.

Probably cheaper than fixing the pedestrian.;)

johnos1984

Anan1 wrote: »

Probably cheaper than fixing the pedestrian.;)

I see your point but there must come a time and place where pedestrians are made to take responsibility for their own safety

Guy:Incognito

Anan1 wrote: »

Probably cheaper than fixing the pedestrian.;)

Unless I own the pedestrian they can fix themselves.:)

johnos1984 wrote: »

I see your point but there must come a time and place where pedestrians are made to take responsibility for their own safety

The trend seems to push ever more towards removign any blame from a pedestrian , regaless of how stupid and/or irresponsible their actions are and to blame the evil car driver.

Anan1

Like the car, the pedestrian is probably going to get repaired out of the drivers insurance policy. Presuming, of course, that they're not a write-off.:)

johnos1984

Anan1 wrote: »

Like the car, the pedestrian is probably going to get repaired out of the everybody's insurance policy.

FYP

JerCotter7

I can only see the writing in the op. How will that work? Once the car detects a person hitting it just blow them away with an airbag? Or is it a case of item coming in quick and set off an airbag. In that case what if a bin bag or something hits your car.

johnos1984

JerCotter7 wrote: »

I can only see the writing in the op. How will that work? Once the car detects a person hitting it just blow them away with an airbag? Or is it a case of item coming in quick and set off an airbag. In that case what if a bin bag or something hits your car.

The bonnet pops up to act as a soft impact zone while the airbag covers the windscreen and A-pillars

monument

johnos1984 wrote: »

Anan1 wrote: »

Probably cheaper than fixing the pedestrian.;)

I see your point but there must come a time and place where pedestrians are made to take responsibility for their own safety

All road users have a responsibility for the safety of their self and others. I also don't think the airbags are a great idea, but it's worth pointing out that it's always a shared responsibility. No one person has sole responsibility for their own safety -- it just can't work like that.

Also, any rhetoric about pedestrians doing this and that just does not wash at a time when there's still so much poor driving which harms them or gets in their way.

Around Dublin at least the following happens all the time and, while not all of these are done by all motorists, way too many motorists are a fault with a lot of these: driving up on to and parking on the footpath, breaking red lights just as they've gone red and the green man is lit, being blind to filter lights and wholesale breaking red filter lights, blocking ped crossings fully ir partly, slowing creaping past the stop line when the lights are still red,speeding, not yielding the right of way to people trying to cross, like at junctions with no ped crossing or even just when somebody is trying to cross the road where there is no ped crossing.

Maybe your driving includes none of those, but loads of drivers endanger pedestrians on a daily bases. But, again, I tend to agree that external airbags may not be the solution.

djimi

monument wrote: »

Also, any rhetoric about pedestrians doing this and that just does not wash at a time when there's still so much poor driving which harms them or gets in their way.

Around Dublin at least the following happens all the time and, while not all of these are done by all motorists, way too many motorists are a fault with a lot of these: driving up on to and parking on the footpath, breaking red lights just as they've gone red and the green man is lit, being blind to filter lights and wholesale breaking red filter lights, blocking ped crossings fully ir partly, slowing creaping past the stop line when the lights are still red,speeding, not yielding the right of way to people trying to cross, like at junctions with no ped crossing or even just when somebody is trying to cross the road where there is no ped crossing.

Maybe your driving includes none of those, but loads of drivers endanger pedestrians on a daily bases. But, again, I tend to agree that external airbags may not be the solution.

Im not disagreeing with you, but just to counteract this my experience of driving around town shows just as many pedestrians with no care for the personal safety as there are dangerous drivers. Ive lost count of the number of times Ive been driving around the city and people just wander off the footpath without a care in the world as to what is coming on the road. There needs to be a middle ground - Im not sure that external airbags/30kmph are the answer; people need to be made resonsible for their own actions.

sports_

What are a pillars.

Bodhan

I'm driving the Volvo XC60 this week and that has City Safety built in, I've used it during controlled situations and it works.

Volvo say that by 2020 no one will die in their cars, that might include that no one will be killed BY their cars either!

eth0

Bodhan wrote: »

I'm driving the Volvo XC60 this week and that has City Safety built in, I've used it during controlled situations and it works.

Volvo say that by 2020 no one will die in their cars, that might include that no one will be killed BY their cars either!

I hope you'll still be able to actually drive a volvo then and that they havn't all become Google driverless cars by then

Bodhan

eth0 wrote: »

I hope you'll still be able to actually drive a volvo then and that they havn't all become Google driverless cars by then

If that day ever comes I'll hopefully be in a home for the bewildered!